


Defunct

by jasontoddist



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Comedy, Depression, Gen, Mental Health Issues, basically batman doesnt exist but all their drama does, racebent!jason, racebent!tim
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 20:43:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7522426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasontoddist/pseuds/jasontoddist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>de·funct<br/>dəˈfəNGkt/<br/>adjective<br/>"no longer existing or functioning."</p><p>Funny, because Jason Todd was starting to identify with the word more and more.</p><p>-</p><p>(An AU in which Batman and Gotham don't exist, but Bruce Wayne does, and he just wants his family together again, Dick Grayson wears glasses and is the president of Wayne Enterprises, Tim Drake is a technology intern, and Jason Todd is a criminal with a lot of feelings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**ONE**

 

Life was rough when you were a societal fuck up.

 

And I’m not saying this as a way to get people to pity me, really; I’m not that kind of guy, but I’m not a liar, either. Compared to where I stood now, and who I was about to see, I can honestly say I was. I’m nineteen, I have the means to go post-secondary, I should be in post-secondary right now, I’m not in post-secondary right now—all that same, repetitive bullshit. Either way I looked at it, as I stood at the front desk on the first floor of Wayne Enterprises—the New York City branch, because when darling Dad is a multi-million dollar conglomerate company owner, you tend to have multiples of just about everything—nothing about it appealed the me. The clean cut, sleek interior design, the panelled lighting, the people walking back and forth wearing blue tooth headsets and carrying suitcases and annoying me with their businesslike efficiency did nothing but piss me off.

 

I approached the front desk, annoyingly aware of the way my scuffed black boots squeaked against the too clean floor beneath my feet, rather than the monotonous _clicking_ sound that everyone else’s shoe soles seemed to be making—man or woman—and put my bike helmet up on the counter with a loud thud. With my leather-clad elbows resting between the concierge’s “welcoming fern plant” _thing_ on my left, and a silver bell on my right, I realized I couldn’t have been even more of an asshole than I was already making myself out to be.

 

Jesus Christ.

 

That realization having been come to, however, I propped my chin in my palm and stared down at the concierge, a small-framed, brunette woman who looked like she was fresh off the business school grind and probably thought that a desk job at one of the world’s biggest companies would somehow be a way to give her self-declared “bright” and “groundbreaking” ideas some type of platform, was typing away at a large Mac desktop, her acrylic nails making the incessant tapping obnoxiously loud. I didn’t have a watch on me, and was a pretty impatient person in general, but I was very sure I’d been standing there long enough to be noticed, and, amazingly, hadn’t.

 

_I’m going to hate myself for this._

Really, I was, but I did it anyway. I dinged the bell that had been sitting there by my right elbow. I dinged it. Multiple times. Enough times that the annoyingly put together business people looked up from their smartphones and gave me a calculating once over before continuing on with their lives, and enough that Front Desk Lady stopped typing with her acrylic nails and looked up at me with slitted green eyes.

 

She was definitely attractive, for sure, if you liked the uniform type. A little on the pale side, and she wore square framed glasses, but hey, I wasn’t one to judge. With her brown hair parted in the middle and pushed back behind her ears, and the functional—really there wasn’t any other word for it besides that—dull grey blazer and matching skirt, she screamed more librarian than Wayne Enterprises Front Desk Lady to me. My eyes dropped a little—not to you know, scan certain areas or anything—but to see if she had a name tag, but I guess they lingered too long for it to be normal, because she cleared her throat sharply, which was enough to say _eyes up here_.

 

“Can I help you?” she asked, her eyes narrowing even more than they already had been a second ago, when I’d dinged the bell.

 

“I’ve been standing here for easily five minutes,” I lied, knowing my ass had only just walked into the building at least two minutes ago. I hated the fact that I was quite literally annoying myself, but another part of me was enjoying it too much to stop. A part of me loved messing with every aspect of my father’s life as much as I could.

 

Front Desk Lady rolled her eyes at me, “If you came here to cause trouble, I can have you thrown out in less than that.”

 

Ugh.

 

Really, it was irritating to be written off so easily, even though I knew I was probably asking for it. With the torn jeans, earrings, chain hanging around my neck, and the leather jacket, I really didn’t look like I belonged in Upper Manhattan at all, but at least I’d shaved this morning. She could have cut me some slack.

 

So I guess that’s why the next words to come out of my mouth were paired with a grossly smug expression on my face as I leaned forward, my elbows propping me up even more, “That won’t be necessary. Care to page _Dick_ —sorry, Richard, I suppose—Grayson? You know him, right? The boss? That’s my brother. He requested to see me at”—I stepped back, my eyes scanning upwards to where they landed on the digital clock above Front Desk Lady’s head, —“10:00 a.m.” I looked back at her, where I could see the horror of slow recognition dawning on her slack, be-spectacled face, “I got up really early for this, too, so I’d hate to be late.”

 

“You’re . . . Jason Todd?” She replied, looking me—well half of me—up and down, incredulity on her face.

 

“I’ve experienced a lot of feelings in my life,” I began, leaning backwards. My eyes fell on the name tag that was on her desk. I’d missed it when I first walked in. _Tracy._ “But disappointing people is by far one of the best.”

 

If she was angered by my words, she didn’t show it. She was too busy typing away at her keyboard, her acrylic nails going _click, click, click._ I watched her face as she did, and I knew she knew I was watching her, because her neck was flushed, so I kept staring, because it was funny to watch people squirm.

 

“I’m—I’m really sorry, Mr. Todd,” she stuttered, glancing up at me, “I just didn’t expect—I mean—”

 

“I wouldn’t, either, Tracy,” I answered laughingly. It was easy to see what was going through her head: the horrible realization that I was her boss’s brother, that I was the even Bigger Boss’s son, that I could complain about her quality of service, that those years on the business school grind were _this_ close to going to shit—I could go on. It’s not like I was invested enough to go that far, anyway, especially since I’d started it. She really wasn’t worth my time, in the grand scheme of things. I leaned in again, propping my chin up in my palm, like it had been before I’d dinged the bell and pissed her off, “I’m easily Bruce Wayne’s least favourite philanthropic endeavour.”

 

Tracy cringed, still not looking at me as she picked up the phone lying on her desk and pressed a button. Whether it was because I’d replaced the operative word _son_ —leaving out the adopted keyword, of course, because with my skin tone and the way my slight accent slurred out certain English words, it was easy to tell that I was—with _philanthropic endeavour_ —or it was her newfound paranoia that she’d finish today jobless, I didn’t know, and I didn’t let it bother me.

 

“Mr. Grayson,” I heard Tracy say over the line, and I straightened, hooking my fingers in the mouthpiece of my helmet. She looked up at me momentarily, and I winked, “your brother is here as per request.” She paused, nodding, “Okay, I’ll send him up right away.” Tracy hung the phone up, looking at me with a caged expression, “the elevators are just—”

 

“Don’t worry, Tracy, I know my way around,” I really didn’t; this was the first time I’d actually been in this building, but I wasn’t about to let her know that. I’d already started walking away from the desk, anyway. When my back was turned to her, I lifted up my hand in a wave, “Thanks for all your help, sweetheart.”

 

I didn’t look back.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**TWO**

 

The Briefcases were staring at me.

 

Not actual briefcases, obviously, but two suit-clad men holding them. One was squat, and bald, and staring at me like I was on FBI’s most-wanted, and the other guy was sufficiently taller, and younger, with gelled down hair and an attitude that led me to think dogs made him uncomfortable. Either way, I was still annoyed, so I stared back, until the tall one started looking at his phone and the bald one was suddenly interested by the patterns on the carpet beneath our feet.

 

It’s not like I didn’t know why I was garnering such a reaction, either, but it still made things awkward. Twenty floors was a long time to spend in close quarters with two other people, the only thing perforating the silence being uplifting elevator music that wasn’t even uplifting, and I was starting to think coming here had been a mistake. I hadn’t really done much with the family department ever since I’d blown off three Ivy Leagues and State university offers of enrolment—which had been a while ago—and I hadn’t really kept in touch. I’d done Christmas though, because far be it from me to be the Grinch of the family unit, but I was a shitty gift buyer and meeting Potential Stepmom #2 hadn’t exactly thrilled me to death. I mean, the last one had been responsible for Dad’s only biological son, a more demon-than-kid by the name of Damian, so God knew what the new one would bring to the table if given the chance. That is, of course, if they were even together. The only longevity Bruce Wayne had was in his bank account and his company.

 

The twentieth floor couldn’t have come fast enough—for the bald guy, at least, because when those elevator doors parted he was out of there with a surprising swiftness. I waited until the other guy made his exit, and then made mine, too, stopping to scan my surroundings. The people up here all looked boringly similar, wearing varying forms of suits, some carrying coffee, others carrying tablets or phones, their eyes glued to them. I wasn’t sure what else I’d have expected to find on the top floor of Wayne Enterprises, but the uniformity of it all had me thinking some existential shit like _is this it?_ —

 

Anyways, before I went all Nietzsche, I decided to put myself into action. I didn’t exactly know where Richard’s office was, and I wasn’t going to ask, either, even with the amount of stares everyone I sauntered past threw my way.

 

I kept to the left, even though the sun filtering in through the floor-to-ceiling windows near blinded me. I couldn’t deny the incredible view of the Manhattan skyline, though a part of me felt the slightest bitter. I wouldn’t expect anything but the best for a Bruce Wayne funded building.

 

I didn’t have to wander that far to find the whereabouts of Dick Grayson. A female assistant of some sorts with a tightly pulled blonde updo approached, without asking for my name, to inform me that Big Brother was waiting for me in the conference room, and headed for what I assumed was its general direction. I was annoyed. Granted, I feel like my default setting was always annoyed, but if Dick was making me sit in on some boring ass business meeting as some way to reform me or some bullshit, he could count on at least one thing: me walking out and thus making this the shortest Wayne family reunion in history.

 

We passed a bunch of weird looking futuristic cubicles and an exorbitant courtyard area that had a skylight and a fountain and a mini garden—which probably counted as the fucking break room—and eventually came to a stop outside a closed black door with the title _CONFERENCE ROOM_ stamped on it in big white letters. If I rearranged and added a few, it might as well have read _DEATH SENTENCE_ instead.

 

The assistant I’d been following opened the door without knocking, and peeked her head in. For some reason my heart started thumping, and not because I’d been staring at her ass, either.

 

I couldn’t see him, but I could hear Dick when he told the assistant to let me in, and that she could return to whatever else it was that assistants did. I walked over the threshold of the conference room, and by this point, my heart was in my throat, and I was trying to gauge my anxiety on the panic meter, but the worst part about panic attacks is that when you’re busy figuring out whether you’re having one or not, you definitely are.

 

It was stupid of me, so, insanely stupid, to be having a panic attack over seeing someone who I hadn’t seen or spoken to in a year. This was Dick Grayson, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t like I was going to get a fucking vasectomy.

 

The room was huge and well lit, to say the least, when I stepped in. I shut the door behind me with a resounding click, forcing myself to calm the hell down. The area was mainly empty, and I found myself staring up the long, black conference table, lined with vacant black chairs, to where Dick Grayson stood with his back turned, shoulders set against the dark fabric of an Italian made suit—don’t ask me how the fuck I knew that—staring out the ceiling height windows that lined the entire north wall of the room, giving another well-angled view of the city from above.

 

Richard Grayson turned around to look at me for the first time in a year, his blue eyes emotionless from behind the glasses frames perched on a straight nose, a feature we both shared that could have been passed off as a familial trait if we were, in fact, related, and belonging to the same racial background. He looked like he’d grown taller since I’d last seen him, something that pissed me off a little, enough so that I took a seat in the chair that was at the complete opposite side of where my older brother stood, looking me up and down with an expression that reminded me a lot of Bruce Wayne. An expression that said, _you could do better, if you tried._

I cleared my throat. “So, you call me here to have a staring contest, or did you actually have a purpose in seeing me?”

 

Dick pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, the gesture calculating and unfeeling. He quirked his lips to the side, as if he were about to tell off a child, instead of have a conversation with his nineteen-year-old brother.

 

“Yes, but it’d be easier to speak to you if I didn’t have to yell from across the room.”

 

I squared my jaw, holding his eyes as I snatched my helmet off the counter loudly and pushed out from where I sat. The wheels on the chair I’d been sitting on sent it backwards about three feet from the force I’d used to get up. As I approached Dick, I noticed he was staring past me, as if contemplating how on earth he’d gotten saddled with the task of dealing with Jason Todd.

 

I picked a chair four seats down from where he sat at the head of the table, kicking my scuffed boots up on the its smooth surface. I crossed my hands behind my head and leaned back, hoping the heels of my shoes left marks. “This satisfy you?”

 

Dick brushed off my comment with a brusque wave of his hand, annoyance clear in his features. Speaking of annoyances on my end, as I examined him from close up, I realize just how much I hadn’t missed him. Any of him, really, from the crisp way he carried himself, his shoulders set confidently, the set of his eyes, and the way his short black hair just _stayed there_ without any gel. The way he had his life together, and, above all, the way he’d perfectly and completely carried out the Great Wayne Ideals without even having to try. In comparison to me, success had come to his once piss poor, parentless ass with brutal ease.

 

“Clearly you’ve been busy,” Dick finally said to me, his eyes fixed below mine. I looked down, to where I now had my hands folded over my stomach, and how the tan skin there was busted, the skin red raw and the knuckles bruised. _Shit_. Clearly something I’d far overlooked before going out today. When I met his eyes again, he was glaring at me like a cop would to a felon.

 

“What I do with my life is my priority,” I replied, not bothering to hide my banged up hands. Really, what would be the point of it? If Grayson wanted to sit there, acting like he had a fucking stick up his—

 

“What are you doing with your life, anyway?” He countered, his tone sharp. From the way his jaw stuck out, I could tell he was clenching his teeth, something he only did when he was on his last nerve. It gave me a sick sense of satisfaction.

 

“That’s it? Not even a, ‘oh my God, my ridiculously witty and handsome younger brother has returned; how are you? How has the last year been?’” I sounded like a dick, and didn’t really give a shit if he’d wondered much about be in the last twelve months, but Dick was being a dick, too, pardon the pun, and I enjoyed a good competition.

 

Dick scoffed, leaning back in the chair, raising his hand to stroke his chin in a move that was so ridiculous it was ugly. Seriously ugly. I almost gagged. “Answer my question,” he snapped finally, picking up a small device and holding it in his left hand. “Even though, by the looks of you, I could probably answer it myself.”

 

His voice was seriously cold, and I mean, I’ve fucked up enough for most of my family to be pissed off with me, but I can’t remember doing anything all that recent to garner this sort of warm welcome. I narrowed my eyes, “since you act like you know me so well, why the fuck don’t you?”

 

He wheeled on me, like my cursing had somehow offended him. “I know you’re not going to school— _clearly_ —so why don’t you tell me how you’ve been making a living for yourself?”

 

“Why the hell are you suddenly so interested?” _It’s not like you or him ever bothered to call._

 

He got up from his seat and approached me. A beat of silence passed between us as he came to stand over me, then reached out to shove my feet off the table. He succeeded, but as soon as he turned around, I put them back up with a loud, obnoxious thud. The irate tense of his shoulders wasn’t even enough to fill me with a smug satisfaction, which annoyed me, because pissing people off was something I normally enjoyed.

 

Dick pressed something on the device he’d picked up a moment ago, and a holographic screen was pulled up in front of me. The quality of technology I was witnessing wasn’t lost on me, nor was I surprised, since this was the sort of shit that had kept me and three other boys fed and clothed for as long as I could remember.

 

In front of me were pie graphs, showing business percentages—boring shit, like annual profits and marketing expenditures. I yawned, just to be an ass, and I could almost hear Grayson rolling his eyes.

 

“You know what this is?” He asked, putting the remote down on the table. He turned to face me, as if he were asking a six year old what 2 + 2 equalled. I scoffed.

 

“You seem to forget I graduated high school with a 4.0 GPA, _brother_ ,” I replied, kicking back again, much to his chagrin, “of course I do.”

 

“Then you realize how important it all is,” he answered, leaning in.

 

“Yeah, I do,” I nodded slowly, examining my fingernails, “one of those numbers go down, and Bruce Wayne’s broke as fuck.”

 

I looked up and laughed at my own joke, even as I watched the expression on Dick’s face turn to granite. Talk about fun police. He exhaled loudly, like a man who was on his last straw.

 

“Listen, I didn’t call you here for you to make an ass of yourself,” Dick began, and like that, my level of fun-having bottomed out to around zero, replaced by a sudden rush of anger that made the blood start to pound in my ears, “or for you to prove to me, Jason Todd, that you haven’t changed, one single bit. You know, when you turned down all those schools last year, I wanted to call you. I wanted to beat some fucking sense into you; but Dad told me to lay off. He told me to give you time. You visited at Christmas, and made a complete mess of that, too—congratulations, by the way—and still Dad told me to lay off. I gave you time. _We gave you time_. And now I’m here, about to give you probably one of the best damn things someone like you could ever hope for, and all you can do is make jokes, and show me you’re still as immature and ridiculous as you were a year ago.”

 

“Frankly, it’s pathetic,” Dick continued, and I let him, because, truthfully, I didn’t know what the fuck was happening right now, and my heart was pounding, and I was so close, so close, _this close_ to getting up, and making his straight nose crooked, and showing him why I had bruises on my knuckles, and—

 

“. . . Bruce Wayne wants to give you a percentage of this company, Jason—” My head snapped up, the pounding lessening just a fraction, as I took in the words he’d just said. And I can’t say that this has happened many times in my life, because it hasn’t, but I was literally, quite honestly, speechless. “He wants you involved in the family business.”

 

My sudden muteness lasted for about two seconds.

 

“What the hell?” I gritted out as I looked up at him, and I knew the glare on my features was a nasty one, because even Grayson looked a little put off. I stood up suddenly, my feet slamming against the hardwood flooring, “so it’s bad enough I was his charity case when I was a kid, and now I have to stick to being one when I’m an adult, too?”

 

Dick scoffed as he leaned against the table, crossing his arms over his chest. He regarded me with a quick sweep of his eyes, every bit as critical and aloof as the other people who’d given me those same stares earlier this morning, “Bruce Wayne is your father. He’s my father. And believe it or not, Jason, he wants us to be a fucking family again. A real one. Not just a group of people who meet up on national holidays and pretend to get along for his sake.”

 

“He’s only my father because a piece of paper he signed says so,” I snapped, picking up my helmet. As far as I was concerned, this was over. No percentage of this company that said I owned it could make anything suddenly different, or make me different.

 

“If this is about us being adopted, Jason,” Dick said, his voice rising, “then get the fuck over it. I really suggest you get rid of that chip on your shoulder, and fast. As far as I’m concerned, as president and shareholder of this company, I’m just trying make sure Dad’s not letting a fucking criminal be his potential new hireling.”

 

I was halfway to the door by the time he’d said that, and I hadn’t even noticed I’d been leaving until his words stopped me. I wheeled around, fists clenched. “You know _fuck-all_ about me, so quit acting like you do.”

 

Dick pointed to my hands, and I uncurled them instinctively, “Care to explain, then?”

 

I tried to backpedal, because really, how would I? I wasn’t a felon. Technically. Not really. It’s not like I was dealing, or a trafficker, just more of a messenger, so to speak. Looking at the torn skin on my knuckles, it was anybody’s guess that message delivering didn’t really involve much speaking. When I opened my mouth, and came up frustratingly blank, Richard sighed, like I’d already answered pretty much everything he needed to know. He was about to speak, no doubt say some more bullshit that just vaguely intoned how much better of a son and legacy-carrier he was than I—really, that’s all I’d gotten from this meeting other than _surprise! Bruce Wayne is acknowledging your existence and is doing something insanely extreme to cover his bottomless guilt over how much of a shithead you turned out to be!_ —when the sound of the door opening and closing interrupted us.

 

I turned around, shoulders tensed, ready to tell whoever it was that they should fucking knock next time; since its rude to walk in on your boss and his brother having a heated discussion deeply embedded with lots of horrible and unresolved emotional issues, until my eyes fell on a face I recognized. Holy shit.

 

“So,” Tim Drake’s head was half concealed by the tablet he held in front of his face, his eyes eating up whatever it was that was on the screen. The sight of him, even in this setting, doing something so familiar to me made it seem like I hadn’t missed out on an entire year of his life, “I got the monthly reports you asked f—”

 

“Timothy Drake,” I said, a smirk on my lips as I took him in. He was another one of the adopted bunch, the last one, actually, before that little motherfucker Damian had gone and outdone all of us by being blood related to Bruce Wayne. He’d always been a soft kid, not really much for talking unless it involved computers, or math algorithms that were ridiculously advanced for someone his age. Right now, though, Tim Drake’s big, slanted eyes were wide with surprise, his mouth dropped open in an ‘O’ shape. He was wearing a black dress shirt, crisp and rolled up at the sleeves, with the matching pants, too, and the dress shoes. Though the tie and the suit jacket were missing, and his black hair was on the shaggy side, he looked every bit the part of Wayne Enterprises as he should. It made everything Grayson had said to me minutes ago sting a little more, somehow.

 

“Jason?” Tim said finally, as he set his tablet down on the table and walked towards me, still looking like I’d just materialized out of thin air. Which, technically I had, if you took into consideration this drop-of-the-hat appearance after a year of no contact, “What are you doing here?” He looked behind me, no doubt at Richard, and there was a slight change in his expression. I hated the realization that I’d missed him.

 

“I could say the same for you,” I answered, pulling him into a one armed hug. I mussed his hair and shoved him, “Aren’t you fifteen?”

 

“Haven’t been gone that long,” we heard Dick say from behind me, and I rolled my eyes so hard I was pretty sure it made an audible sound.

 

“Anyways . . . I graduated last month, you prick,” he replied, glaring at me, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. I smiled back. He returned it. “Dad and Grayson thought it would be a good idea for me to intern here for the summer before I go off to college in the fall.”

“That’s amazing, Tim, seriously, I mean it.” It felt good to mean what I’d said, for a change.

 

Tim was cheesing at this point, something he did a lot when you complimented him, and was about to say something before Dick interrupted.

 

“You should see the work he’s done for the company, Jason,” he said as he came to stand in front of me. Tim looked between us, as if he could tell what had happened, and wasn’t sure if he should really be in the room right now, “With his knowledge of computers and tech, he’ll really be able to bring some big ideas to the table when he actually starts working here.”

 

I could have punched him, really, I could have, but I figured I’d spare the kid in the room. I knew what Grayson was doing, and I’m pretty sure Tim did, too, because he was rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. I didn’t have to be a genius to read between the lines of what he was saying, _Look at your little brother. He’s so much more than you._

 

“I’m proud of you, Tim, really, I’m happy for you—”

 

“Think about Dad’s offer, Jason,” Dick said, cutting me off, “really, if you know what’s good for you, you will.”

 

Clearly this was my cue to leave. Pushing past him, I made it to the door before he interrupted me again. “You’ll think about it?”

 

“I doubt it.”

 

“Wait, what are you talking about—” Tim’s voice was small in contrast.

 

“Bruce really wants this, Jason.”

 

I stopped, my hand already on the doorknob, and turned around. I took in the sight of my two brothers, Dick in his Italian made suit, standing there with his arms crossed and his brows furrowed, and Tim standing next to him, shorter and smaller-framed, with his arms hanging slack by his side and confusion on his face. I really didn’t want to do this. Not in front of him. It sucked when the only sibling you actually liked had to see you being such an asshole.

 

“Dad wouldn’t want to see you waste such a good opportunity,” Grayson said finally.

 

“Yeah, well, you know what he’s full of? Take a guess—its a four letter word.” I saw Tim’s eyes widen a little at my response, but there was no turning back now, “it was nice seeing you, Drake.” I looked between both of them, “maybe I’ll make an appearance for Thanksgiving, but who knows? It’s nice to keep people on their toes.”

 

Before either of them could say anything else, I was gone, shutting the door behind me.


	3. Chapter 3

**THREE**

 

If there’s anything in my life that could really stand to change, it would definitely be where I lived.

 

I mean, I wasn’t an ungrateful person, or anything (I’ll spare you the gory details about how I’m lucky to have a roof over my head, blah, blah; that shit is boring anyway), but I feel like anyone who has a one bedroom apartment in the middle of Chinatown, as I do, has the right to complain about it all they want.

 

I parked my bike in the litter-strewn parking lot behind my building, setting up the kickstand as I did. I wasn’t really worried about anyone helping themselves to my mode of transportation. The last person that did got billed with hospital fees, and this may come as a surprise, but word happens to travel fast in tightly packed, low-income housing areas.

 

I entered the dank alleyway that shouldered my building, boots splashing through puddles of god-knows-what, passing piles of garbage, a used condom—that was new—and not one, but multiple used needles. I was used to seeing shit like this, but I had to admit it added character.

 

I made it into the building without getting hassled, which was easily a new record, and as soon as my feet hit the lobby of my building; was greeted by the familiar smell of weed and unfiltered cigarette smoke. I exhaled loudly, ignoring my mailbox, which I knew was overflowing, probably. Home sweet home.

 

I took the first flight of stairs two at a time, because the elevator was incapable of going up one floor without stalling—something the whole building had learned about on a night six months ago when Mrs. Fenway on the fourth floor got trapped there at three o’ clock in the morning. I’m pretty sure my landlord knew about that, too, so there’s that.

My feet hit the landing on the second floor with a resounding thud, and I was about to make my way up another set of stairs until the sight of someone irritatingly, all-too familiar stopped me abruptly. As if my life wasn’t already annoying me enough—

 

“Jayyyy….. son!” She said— _screeched_ —addressing me before I could push my way past her. The girl was seated sideways, her legs taking up the entire third stair. I pinched the bridge of my nose. Over my past twelve months spent in this place, I’d gotten to know the building junkie in passing. She was a short girl, maybe around 5’2”, with lank brown hair and a frame bony enough to make her look like she wasn’t any older than twelve. A gross exaggeration on my part, but brutal honesty was one of my best qualities.

 

“Shay,” I said, my tone flat as I stepped over her legs and pushed myself up onto the stair above her. I glanced at her over my shoulder, and besides the familiar, freckle-smattered pale skin of her face, her pupils were blown wide, nearly entirely black. Even though she was looking at me, she was probably so fucked up right now she could hear colours. “It’s what—” I pulled back the sleeve of my jacket, checking the watch that wasn’t there. In her state, I don’t think she would have known otherwise—“Barely lunchtime? Getting started early, I see.”

 

I turned to go, and when I glanced back, I startled a little, surprised to see her right on my heels. _Great._ I couldn’t really complain for the company, I guess, since she was one of the only people in my building who talked to me. I’d never seen her sober even once, but I feel like getting high this early was a new, even for her.

Shay suddenly laughed, and the sound was small, like she’d just gotten a joke that I hadn’t even told her. Even as I climbed the stairs, I could see her out of the corner of my eye, looking up at me—well, not really at me, more like _through_ me—she smiled again, and I noticed her lips were chapped. “Something happened today.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Isn’t that exciting?” This time, I looked at her, really looked at her, and she was holding her hands in front of her face, grinning at them like they’d suddenly changed colours. To be fair, with whatever world she was in right now, they probably had.

 

I looked back up at the flight of stairs before me. I lived on the sixth floor, so I still had three to go. I sighed. Might as well.

 

“And just what happened today, Shay?” I asked, slowing down so I could hear her tiny voice. She almost tripped when her foot caught the lip of the third stair, and I reached my hand out to catch her. She giggled, her eyes unfocused. “ _Shay._ ” I snapped my fingers in front of her, and she shook her head.

 

“Oh, right,” she began, smiling a little, “so I was on your floor today, before I took my hit—or after? Was it after? I can’t remember if it was . . . So I was on your floor. And, there was a man.”

 

I turned my head so I could roll my eyes without her seeing. She’d need a spaceship at this point if she ever wanted to reach planet Sober again. “That’s really exciting—”

 

She hit my arm playfully, and I frowned at her. Her eyes were wide, and not just because her pupils were fully black, but because she looked like she’d remembered something important, “I’m not done! Did you lock your doors when you left today, Jason? You were gone a long time. The man was scary. Really tall. He let himself into your room, but I don’t know if he had a key. And then the dog on the floor below started barking, and I got distracted, and your neighbour Mr. Chu—”

 

“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” I stopped abruptly, and felt her slam into my back. The force of impact sent her spiralling backwards, and she caught the rail before she could fall backwards, but this time I was the one too far out of it to even—

 

_Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck_

“What did he look like? Huh?” I snapped, my heart already hammering against my ribcage. When I looked over at Shay again, she was spaced out again, staring at the wall in front of her. I clapped to get her attention. “ _Shay!_ ”

She jumped, her reaction slightly delayed. A part of me—a very, very small part—was wondering whether or not she was telling the truth, whether she’d seen the wrong guy walking into the wrong room, but I knew this had to be legit. Shay was batshit half the time with track marks running up and down her arms, but she wasn’t a liar.

 

“I told you,” she said slowly, nodding as if she were trying to piece her words together. Talking to her was like trying to talk to someone who spoke a different language, “he was tall.”

 

And there’s my cue.

 

I shook my head, then took off for the next flight of stairs, knowing this conversation had clearly run its course. My mind was racing, racing way too far ahead of where my feet were, and my anxiety and adrenaline were mixing together, and I couldn’t tell which was which, and this day was turning out to be a very, _very_ bad one.

 

“Jason!” She called after me. I considered ignoring her. “ _Jason_!”

 

I stopped in my tracks, this close to telling her off, until I saw the look on her face. She was leaning in, even though we were at least five feet away from each other.

 

Bringing up her hand to cup her mouth, she stage whispered, “I think he had a gun.”

 

“ _¡Mierda!_ ”

 

“That’s a bad w—”

 

I was gone before she could finish her sentence. I’d been doing a lot of that, lately.


	4. Chapter 4

 

**FOUR**

When I’d last seen Jason, he’d had this expression like the world hated him, and he didn’t really give a damn.

 

This time, he still had the same expression, but something had changed. A slight give, a few tweaks, but the meaning was still conveyed loudly enough to me that it felt like it had been shouted. The world hated Jason, and Jason hated it back.

 

A part of me felt like I’d lost something that couldn’t be found when I watched him walk out on us in that conference room only minutes ago, standing there with my iPad in my left hand and my older brother on my right hand, looking like he wanted to choke the life out of Jason or maybe even me for walking in that room at that moment or maybe even both. I’d reached the point in my life where I’d stopped thinking about how Richard used to be and what used to be. As more time passed, he grew harder and harder to read, something I disliked. I wasn’t really good with things that I couldn’t reprogram, which put you at a seriously huge disadvantage when you lived in a family like mine.

 

The images flashed in my mind like a gag reel, and I half expected someone to jump out and yell “You’ve been pranked!”, because it honestly felt like this was what that was. Seeing Jason there, taller and a little rougher around the edges than he’d been his whole life, with the red welts on his knuckles and the line of tensity in his shoulders, and displaying absolutely zero character development from where we’d last left off felt like something out of a bad comedy, where the prodigal son comes home except—jokes!—he leaves 15 minutes later to go back to whatever life he’s been living.

 

I didn’t know how long me and Richard had been standing there, staring off into the open space where Jason had been and suddenly wasn’t, and I didn’t know why we stood there for so long, as if he were going to come back anytime soon. People left. That’s why I liked computers. You could upgrade them and force them to be better.

 

“Still the self righteous prick he was twelve months ago,” I heard Dick mutter, and my head snapped up to look at him. He was tense, the definition of the word itself, as I watched him absentmindedly fiddle with the already perfect knot in his silk tie and then push his glasses even farther up the bridge of his straight nose. Any more, and the lenses would meld to his eyeballs.

 

“You should give him—”

 

“I should give him _what_ , Tim?” he snapped, wheeling on me. I took a step back, feeling the iciness in the atmosphere like something almost physical. I forced myself to meet and match the hardness of his expression with one of my own.

 

“You acting like a fucking idiot isn’t going to do _shit_ ,” I replied tersely. I set the iPad down on the conference room table. “I know you’re all about impressing him. Impressing Dad. Twenty-five years later and you’re still trying to impress him. You want this to work? Try another approach.”

 

Something shifted in Richard’s expression, but was gone as soon as it had come. I felt the sort of satisfaction one would feel when they know they’ve gotten the best of someone, if only for a brief moment. Richard and I didn’t argue often. I was too quiet, and he was too clinical, and over the years our relationship as brothers had gone from warm to businesslike. I didn’t know when that had happened. By the time I had realized it, it had been too late to cry over.

 

Dick was quick to regroup. “He’s not one of your computers, Tim. He’s not an operating system; or something you can fix.”

 

“I don’t think he wants to be fixed.”

 

Richard was silent then, and I could tell I’d shut him up then, even moreso when I watched him walk to the head of the table and take a seat, spinning his chair around so that its back was towards me. The dismissal was obvious, but still, I stayed.

 

I missed it, if I was honest with myself, which was something that was hard to do when your mind raced a mile a minute and you were constantly thinking of algorithms, formulas, and software genetics. My brain was like a chip that had been spliced in a million different directions, something that rarely stopped to focus on a single thing, no matter how much I wanted it to.

 

In that moment it was, though, as I thought about Jason and the way he had hugged me, how for a second it felt like maybe he was really home this time, maybe everything really could be good for once; maybe the Wayne family could stop pretending to be something we weren’t for the first time in forever. I knew all those stupid, stupid thoughts had been futile the minute my mind had spewed them out, but I couldn’t help it. I was, as the cronies of Wayne Enterprises often whispered when they thought I couldn’t hear; a kid, after all. A kid with kid thoughts and kid emotions.

 

Jason and I had always been the odd fittings of the family, the Latino kid with the accent that never really went away and the half Korean kid who came from families with dead mothers and dads who really didn’t bother with anything beyond the next high. I melded to the Wayne ideals better than Jason had: I was quiet, I pressured myself to do well; I couldn’t disappoint. Disappointment was worse than failure. Disappointment disgusted me.

 

Jason was different, drastically so. I watched him the closest as we grew up together, two years apart, and I watched him because he intrigued me, and when something intrigued me, I studied it tirelessly. He didn’t seem to care when he let someone down, whether it be himself or our father; didn’t really seem to be focused on making anyone proud. He was smart, choosing home education over a public one, when we’d gotten far too many calls soliciting Mr. Wayne to come down to the school because his second eldest son had gotten into another fight.

 

He hated math. He was brilliant at it. He loved to read. He had told me that he had read _The Art of War_ by Sun Tzu and had enjoyed it un-ironically. I had smiled at that.

 

I remembered a lot as I stood there in the conference room, feeling more and more lost as the seconds ticked by. I especially remembered that night, the night he’d left while everyone had been asleep, the one night I’d fallen asleep before five o’ clock in the morning due to my brain that never had an off switch, and I’d followed him down the stairs and into the garage where I watched him put on his stupid motorcycle helmet with nothing except a backpack on him. I’d thought he was stupid. Jason had run away before, but he’d always come back. I’d thought this was just another one of those times, even though the air of it all felt so different it left a bad taste in my mouth.

 

“I’m leaving,” he’d said, as if it weren’t already obvious enough, “for good.”

 

I’d said some things back to him, things I couldn’t remember. I think they were hurtful. Vaguely I remembered reading somewhere that under experiences of extreme distress, your brain chose to forget things over time.

 

Still, Jason hadn’t looked bothered by what I’d said.

 

“You’ve found your place here and I’m happy for you,” he’d replied, his voice sounding strained, “but that’s not me. None of this is me. I don’t want to be like our father, I don’t want to be like our brother.”

 

I felt like I was being hollowed out like a Jack-O-Lantern, like someone was scooping my insides out and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. My brain had started racing again, for some reason choosing to drudge up that one time Jason had convinced me into stealing Dick’s Audi M8— the one that he loved to remind us was very new and very imported—and we’d spent half the night tearing through Upper East Side Manhattan and for a second it had felt like there wasn’t the constant, imploding pressure on my brain to be a Wayne, but to just be Tim Drake instead.

 

“Promise me one thing, Tim,” Jason had said, and I’d nodded, because I hadn’t trusted myself to speak and he was my brother and I loved him; I even felt then that I would have died for him at some point, and that was it, the great big weakness of Timothy Drake—

 

“Promise me you’ll still be you—in a years time, in two years time, in twenty years time,” he’d said, and I’d thought he was tearing up, but that was foolish of me, because Jason Todd had never cried in the entire eighteen years of his life, “if I come back, promise me I’ll still recognize you.”

 

And I felt it then, the feeling of _saudade_ , the word itself, used to describe an indescribable feeling of loss or incompleteness, the emptiness of space where someone you loved had been there but suddenly wasn’t anymore. I felt it so hard that my legs almost gave way, because I felt inside myself a loss too, the feeling of missing who I once was when we were family, when I knew how it felt to have a brother and to feel like we were, and it made my heart ache in such a way that I thought it would split in two.

 

And suddenly I was standing in the middle of the conference room again, my eyes shining as I realized my short-circuited brain had gone off on one of its tangents again.

 

I sighed, straightening the cuffs of my black dress shirt before picking my iPad up off the table.

 

“I’ll get the reports into the technical branch tomorrow,” I said, my voice distant and something else entirely as I walked towards the door. Inside, I felt the complete opposite.

 

I wanted it all back; everything: the time when Richard Grayson was Dick Grayson who laughed, the time when I felt happy and it seemed like it was genuine. I wanted Jason Todd back; I wanted my brother back.

 

It was my best kept secret.


	5. Chapter 5

**FIVE**

By the time I reached my apartment door, I was pissed off.

 

The door was closed, which made me think this was all some sort of sick joke, like _hi, I just broke into your apartment to borrow some milk, but I left everything the way it was_ , and when I turned the doorknob, it was unlocked. Obviously.

 

The state my apartment was in did nothing to help my already shit mood. The more my eyes took in, from the overturned couches to the open cabinets, the ripped blinds over my windows and— _fuck_ , even my fucking potted plant—the more it became apparent that either I’d been hosting an entire zoo in my living area without my knowledge, or someone had seriously been looking for something.

 

My heart sped up, and not because despite who I am, and how I look, I’m a neat freak, and the fact that there was soil from my bonsai tree all over my living room floor, and my couches were smeared with something that I hoped was mud and not another substance was making my eye develop a twitch, but because I knew who had done this; and I knew why they had done this.

 

I stormed past the kitchen, which looked even worse than the living room, and stomped into my room, where I physically braced myself before flipping the light switch.

 

A mess. It was a fucking mess.

 

The sheets were everywhere, very obviously _not_ folded in the precise, specific square corners that I took twenty-five minutes each morning to do myself, my clothing was strewn all over the floor, and my pillows had been ripped to shreds. That made me really mad, too, because those had been good—

 

_Focus._

 

I sidestepped the mess on my bedroom floor, yanking open my closet doors. My eyes skimmed over the askew clothing and zoomed straight in on the misplaced floorboard at my feet and I groaned loudly.

 

 _“_ Fuck, fuck, fuck, _puta cabrón,_ motherfucking, _coño,_ shit, shit, _mierda_ —”

 

The words poured out of me and they wouldn’t stop, because at this point my mind had done that thing it likes to do where it completely shuts down, and the pulse in my wrists feel like they’re about to explode out of my skin, and the back of my neck starts to perspire, and next thing I knew I was kneeling and ranting to myself in Spanish either about how stupid I was and how sorry this poor motherfucker who had done this to me was going to be, but mostly how much shit I was going to get in with my boss when he found out that ten grand of _his money_ that I was supposed to give him later that night was very decidedly not where it was supposed to be, which was, if you’ve deduced by now, underneath a floorboard in my closet.

 

It was cliché, you didn’t have to tell me this. Then again, if I took a step back to look at myself, everything in my entire life was a cliché. I was a thug who lived in a shoebox apartment in a shitty part of town and drove a motorcycle. Nothing out of the ordinary.

 

The buzzing in my back pocket snapped me out of it, and I swore. When I took it out and saw the name on the caller ID, I swore even louder.

 

“Now’s not really a good time,” I snapped as soon as I pressed the answer button.

 

“Well make it a good time,” the voice on the other end of the line answered, and my blood spiked. Tino and I had known each other since we were kids, long before Bruce Wayne had found my eight year old ass dumpster diving in a back alleyway and had decided I fit the definition of a Morgan Freeman-esque delinquent who just needed a loving home and a fuzzy family, and in all our years of knowing each other, I didn’t know what pissed me off more—Tino’s attitude or the fact that his name was so typically street it made my head pound.

 

“What do you want?”

 

“Don’t get your dick in a twist. The boss wants to make sure you know the time and the place. I’m calling in so you don’t fuck it up.”

 

“Well you’re in for a treat, because I kind of already did.”

 

The line went silent for so long that I thought Tino had hung up on me.

 

“Jason.”

 

“Tino.”

 

“Don’t fucking fuck with me.”

 

“Here’s the deal, Tino,” I said as I rose from my kneeling position, sounding calmer than I actually felt. I leaned against the doorframe of my closet, examining the empty space underneath the floorboard where the money had been and envisioning myself getting shot over this big of a fuck up. If my boss didn’t do it, Tino definitely would. “Someone broke into my apartment and found where I was keeping it. It’s gone. _Gone. No es aquí._ ”

 

My tone was cocky; annoyingly so. But I could hear how angry it was making Tino, so I didn’t stop.

 

“You fucking cunt, are you fucking with me? Do you know how angry the big man’s gonna be when he finds out _you_ fucked up? You’re getting sloppy, Jason; sloppy as hell. You’re a fucking idiot.”

 

The way he spoke to me made my blood rush so hard I felt as if my veins were going to pop out of my skin, and I was a liar if the shit I’d already dealt with concerning the good old family unit this morning wasn’t already dog piling on top of the situation I was in now. As far as days went, I was having a pretty bad one.

 

“I can get the money back,” I said, sounding more sure of myself than I felt. Sure, I was good at what I did, if pounding the shit of someone’s face with your fists counted as a trade skill. It made me enough money to live my life, so I couldn’t be that bad of a worker. Involving myself with gangs and drugs and crime bosses wasn’t exactly an easy pill for people like my family to swallow, but I knew who I was, and I’d stopped giving a shit about disappointing people a long time ago. I only had three rules: I didn’t deal, I didn’t hurt women, and I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t need to be a bigger piece of shit than I already was.

 

“What do I tell the boss then?” Tino snapped, and I could tell his patience with me was easily around paper thin.

 

“What the fuck do you think, genius? Tell him he’s going to have to wait. I’ll get it to him tomorrow morning.”

 

“Jason—”

 

“Do I have to repeat myself? The guy who did this seriously fucked with my apartment. There’s mess everywhere. I have to go now.”

 

Tino made a sound that was somewhere between a half choke and a loud cough.

 

“Oh, and another thing?”

 

Tino didn’t answer, so I continued.

 

“Call me a ‘fucking idiot’ again, and I’ll beat your fucking ass.”

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**SIX**

I’d been staring at it for almost thirty minutes now.

 

It, being the handgun I kept in the drawer of my bedside table. I knew if I opened the magazine there’d be five bullets there; the same amount there had been when I’d first loaded it. It was unused. The safety switch was on.

 

I took it with me to most of my jobs, because it was insurance, but I’d never had to use it. Not seriously, anyway. The first time I’d threatened someone with it, I’d come back to my apartment and had a panic attack so bad I’d nearly blacked out.

 

I guess that made me a bitch, but at least I could be honest with myself. Unfeelingly, I picked up the gun and slid it into the band of my jeans, the handle of it so cold it seared the skin on the small of my back. I pulled the red hood over my head, and straightened my leather clad shoulders.

 

It was around eleven o’clock, and even though I knew I’d made a promise I absolutely had to keep, the weight of it sat on my shoulders like a load of bricks. It had taken me hours to clean my apartment, and scrubbing the material on my couch until my fingers went red raw wasn’t enough to get the stains out. And I mean, yeah, I’d gotten that couch at a shitty furniture store down the street that had promised me same day delivery, and had gotten there three days late and with a rip in one of the cushions, but I’d grown attached to it, so I figured that either way I would have beaten the shit out of the person who did this whether or not they’d taken the money at all.

 

I grabbed my keys off my bedside table, then slid its drawer closed. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I turned, but didn’t bother to stop and stare. I knew what would be looking back, anyway—a tall kid with bags under his eyes, skin sallow from a shitty diet and bad sleeping habits, and a blank expression. I didn’t know where or when I’d begun to look like the human embodiment of a callous, but I’d sure as hell felt like one for as long as I could remember, so I guessed it was only a matter of time.

 

I jiggled the lock on my apartment door as I took the keys out, nearly laughing at the irony of my situation. Though it was late, a room a floor above me was clearly in the midst of having a grand time, if the wall-vibrating bass was to be an indicator. The hall reeked of weed and cigarette smoke, and when I passed by one door, I could have sworn I heard a man and a woman yelling at each other. When I reached the staircase and peered down, I didn’t see Shay. The realization saddened me somehow.

 

I really was acting like one emo fuck, and I told myself to snap out of it. This wasn’t Jesus’ Last Supper.

 

I descended the stairs like I’d ascended them a few hours ago—two at a time. Every time I hit a landing, the harshness of it jarred my knees in a way that felt good. The gun bit into the skin of my back as I walked, an annoying reminder of everything that had happened today. I didn’t really have high expectations when I woke up every morning—you know, either your day was shit or it wasn’t—but I hadn’t exactly asked for this much fuckery to happen in under twenty-four hours. At this point, if Tino shot me, I’d thank him.

 

I’d have to get the money back first, and I couldn’t tell whether the feeling in my gut was the pressure to do well or just flat out annoyance with the whole situation. I didn’t think I’d ever tried to impress anyone in my entire life, so if something had suddenly changed and I was now, in fact, trying to impress someone—namely my boss, Lord and Giver of My Cheques—then this was news to me. I’d have preferred if I’d gotten a notification at least.

 

I exited my building, the sudden smell of fresh air welcome to my lungs. The street was busy, as streets usually are in New York City when its nighttime, and it was easy to blend in. I kept my head down and my hands shoved into my pockets, my feet walking of their own accord. I knew where to go.

 

-

 

The first thing I noticed was the dog.

 

It was a grey pitbull, blind in one eye and mangy as fuck with scars around its neck, but I couldn’t help but feel a strange sort of affinity towards the animal. I’d come to this warehouse more than once, and every time I did, there she was, always in the same place. I think her name was Rosie.

 

She was chained to the fence in front of the dimly lit warehouse, lying prone and not at all watchdog-like in the least, something that made the corner of my lips twist up in an absentminded smile despite the fact that I was literally going to beat the shit out of someone and steal back money from them when I was finished. Life never stopped throwing ironies at you.

 

I approached her, and she blinked at me from her good eye. I squatted, offering her the flat of my open palm to sniff, even though my brain was screaming _JASON NOW IS NOT THE MOTHERFUCKING TIME-_

 

“Ay, _cariño_ ,” I whispered, and the pitbull’s ears pricked up at me. She whined softly, and I shushed her, “Some security you are.” I stood up, and she eyed me disinterestedly. Before I could stop myself, I said, “I’ll come back for you.”

 

It was stupid, really, because I was one hundred percent serious.

 

I grabbed the chain links on the fence, toes of my boots digging in as I began scaling it. I didn’t look back, but I could tell the dog was watching me. My mind had gone dead, almost like a flatline on a heart monitor, something I often felt before I went to do a job.

 

My feet hit the pavement, and I looked back to see the pitbull staring at me through the holes in the fence. I flashed her a smile, one with all teeth and no feeling, almost as if I was doing this for her. In a way I was, I guess. If I didn’t succeed I’d be either dead or jobless or both, and I’d made a promise. To a dog, yes, but a promise was a promise. I didn’t like breaking them.

 

As I walked towards the warehouse, I swore to myself I wouldn’t.

 

-

 

It didn’t take me long to bust open the back door of the warehouse, and when I slipped past the doorframe, I immediately became aware of the odd quietness inside the building. I was in one of the back halls, a storage unit—a loose term, anyway, because I knew if I looked into one of the crates that were labelled “Brazilian Pineapples” I definitely would not find Brazilian pineapples—and the lights were off. I was almost dizzy with a strange sense of relief, hoping that this meant I could get in and get out and grab the stupid dog that I’d made the stupid promise to, and life could continue on being just peachy.

 

I guess whoever was in charge had a different plan, because as soon as I thought the words, I heard a crash followed by a loud _FUCK_ , and my eyes rolled so far back into my head I was pretty sure I saw a split second glimpse of the future. Things could never just be straightforward.

 

The sound came from deeper inside the warehouse, so I crept around the shelves lined with crates and boxes, careful not to make a sound. Either way I looked at it, I didn’t think tonight would end without a confrontation, so I forced the blood that was currently roaring in my ears to stop and my breathing to even out. Being sloppy wouldn’t help where I was concerned.

 

The strangeness of everything screamed at me so loud that I could hardly even think straight, so bad that I nearly tripped over my own feet. My adrenaline spiked. _I couldn’t afford to fuck this up I couldn’t afford to fuck this up I couldn’t afford to-_

“Think you’re slick eh?” It took me a minute before it registered that the voice was addressing me. I stopped in my tracks.

 

“Don’t be a bitch. I’m right here.”

 

I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to stop my heart from hammering out of my chest. Everything was happening at once, and not in all the way I wanted it to, and that fucked with me. I wasn’t good at things I couldn’t control. The gun biting into the skin on the small of my back wasn’t doing anything to help me out. I was acting like a fucking rookie.

 

I think my hands were shaking. I wasn’t sure.

 

Before I could stop myself, I slipped out from where I stood pressed against the wall and entered the main area of the warehouse. It was big and spacious, but stacked from floor to ceiling with crates. Everything was familiar to me, even the desk that sat in the centre with the office chair placed behind it, almost like a twisted version of a principal’s office. When my eyes fell on the man leaning against it, my gut twisted.

 

“Jason!” Julian Buterra had a twisted smile on his face, but the tone in his voice made it seem like we were long lost relatives who hadn’t seen each other in a while. He was tall, taller than me—and I was tall—and maybe around five years older. We’d done transactions (again, a loose term) several times with each other, but it didn’t make me dislike him any less. “Still handsome, I see.”

 

“Still full of shit, I see,” I snapped, already irritated. The less we talked, the better. I had a dog waiting for me outside.

 

“Don’t be like that,” Julian replied, standing up straight and opening his arms wide, as if he expected me to embrace him. My eyes slid downward, to the gun I saw he had strapped to his hip. The hairs on the back of my neck raised. “Why the need to sneak up on me?”

 

“Cut the bullshit,” I deadpanned, and when my stance shifted so I could take my hands out of my pockets, the metal of the gun I had in my jeans pressed so tightly into my skin I was sure there would be a bruise there tomorrow, “you have something that doesn’t belong to you.”

 

Julian laughed like I’d told the world’s greatest joke, “look around you, Jay.” My shoulders tensed. “We’re criminals. Nothing really belongs to us.”

 

I didn’t know why being called a criminal suddenly made me so uncomfortable. My focus was scattering by the second, suddenly jumping to my meeting with Grayson just hours before, when he’d basically intoned the same thing. My eyes skittered quickly over my surroundings, and I knew I must have looked like the biggest bitch right now to Julian, but my mind was racing. I didn’t have a record, not like I knew he did, not like I knew the people I worked with did. I knew what I did was less than legal, but was I really—

 

“A slight oversight. That money you took, it belongs to my boss. You know the deal between Vincent and James. He pays my guy ten percent and you get left to yourselves. You wouldn’t want to fuck that up, would you?” I flicked my eyes back up to his, and I could tell he was processing what I’d said. _Good._

“You know what I think, Jason?” Julian pushed himself out of his leaning position that he’d taken up on the desk, and made a few steps towards me. I tried not to look as coiled as I felt. “I think ten percent is bullshit.”

 

“Gotta play by the rules, Julian,” I shrugged casually. “I don’t make them.”

 

“But you’re here.”

 

“I’m an enforcer.”

 

Julian laughed again, taking another step towards me. I became hyperaware of the gun at his hip, and hyperaware of the gun in the band of my jeans, almost like I was growing a sixth sense. “You’re a kid, Jason. You trying to prove yourself? Get a promotion?”

 

He was three feet away from me now. I smiled cockily, “Like I said, Julian. There’s rules. I have to play by them too.”

 

“Yeah well, you being here is really fucking with _my_ set of rules, so I guess we’re even.”

 

“Not until I have the money, man,” I answered, and I didn’t know when I’d started walking towards him too, but pretty soon we stood face to face. I dropped the act, my face blank. “Give me the money, Julian.”

 

“You’re desperate, and it’s showing.”

 

I watched as a bead of perspiration rolled down the side of Julian’s head, and my face broke into a smile. “You’re sweating, and it’s showing.”

 

He looked at me. I looked at him.

 

I had a knack for sensing when I’d pushed someone over the edge. It was one of my talents, if I had any at all. I was even better at telling when someone was about to hook the fuck out of me, because a split second later, Julian’s right arm arced, his hand curving into a fist, and I ducked, forcing myself to jump back.

 

Julian stumbled, the force of missing my face stunning him more than it stunned me, and I saw my chance. I felt my hand ball up, and before he could react, I clocked him in the jaw, the burning in my knuckles a telltale sign that I’d reopened the cuts on them from a few nights before. Blood sprayed, followed by Julian’s grunt, and a sense of satisfaction settled into the pit of my stomach.

 

Julian backpedalled, and this time, the window of luck I’d had moments ago was gone.

 

I felt the hit before it came, his knuckles connecting with my cheekbone. Pain splintered up the side of my skull, angry and red and burning, and my head whipped to the side, but I shook it off. My heart was thumping so hard it was the only thing I could hear—well, that and my own inner monologue that was telling me in that moment how much of a fucking idiot I was, and _what the hell did you think would happen, Jason?_ —but I had no time for that. Time was everything.

 

I threw my fists out, and I was hitting him, hitting him so hard the muscles in my forearms were burning like they were on fire and bruises were forming on my clenched fingers. He hit back—twice, one that grazed me on the lip and another that got me in the eye—but it didn’t take me long to get into the rhythm of things. The rhythm of _it_. My job.

 

He was on the floor and I was beating the shit out of him—his face was this hideous, pulpy thing, and he was gasping and grunting and groaning and I wasn’t stopping, I kept telling myself it was work, this was work, this was just a job, just the way I made money, but when his eyes closed, I let go and sprang back like I’d touched a flame.

 

_He’s not breathing he’s not breathing he’s not—_

 

His leg twitched, and the breath left my lungs in a gasp I didn’t know I’d been holding. My mind was fragmenting, and I was taking everything in through frames, almost like a camera—the sight of Julian lying there, ragged for breath and bleeding from almost everywhere on his face, my bloody knuckles, my hands, my hands, my hands; they were shaking, I didn’t think I’d ever—

 

_Get a grip._

I glanced around frantically, then ran around to the space behind the desk, my breathing coming out in gasps. I was pretty sure I was having a panic attack.

 

There were stacks of money neatly organized underneath the desk, probably for a later transaction, but my eyes fell on the thing I wanted. The thing I’d come for. The material on the bag was familiar—red, like the hood I wore and the blood on my knuckles—and inside was the money. All ten grand of it. I grabbed it without another moment’s hesitation and slung it over my shoulder—

 

_Click._

I went dead in my tracks, my body freezing up, the blood in my veins going ice cold. I was vaguely aware of the sweat that was pouring down my back, making my clothing stick to me like a second skin, but I couldn’t think about anything else.

 

“You take one more step, Jason, I swear to God I’ll blow the back of your fucking head off.”

 

It was Julian, I knew it was. His voice was ragged and his breath unsteady, that much I could tell, but it was him. When I turned slowly around, I almost grimaced at the sight of him. He looked like a monster, his left eye swollen and blood gushing from the gashes I’d pounded into his face. The fact that I almost hadn’t stopped made me—

 

“Put the fucking bag down, Jason.”

 

“I can’t do that.”

 

 _“Put. It. Down.”_ I watched his finger move off the handle and latch around the trigger and—

The bullet shot from the gun in a sound so deafening I thought my ear drums were disintegrating. Everything seemed to happen in stop-motion frame—the gun that I hadn’t even known I’d drawn from where I’d kept it in the back of my jeans fell to the ground with a loud clatter, Julian’s body slung backwards with the force of the bullet entering him, the sick thudding sound I heard when he connected with the concrete—everything was suddenly too bright and too loud and too all at once and for the first time in my life I was doing it, I was really, really losing it.

 

He was dead. I didn’t need to put my fingers to his neck to know I wouldn’t feel a pulse. He was dead, and I killed him.

 

My hands shook. I picked up the gun and shoved it into spot where it had been before I’d taken it out, before I’d used it. Everything was detached, detached and distant and I felt nothing.

 

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and searched for Tino’s number. When I found it, I hit dial. It didn’t take long for him to pick up.

 

“This better be g—”

 

“I got the money.”

 

“Whoa, wait, what? That’s—”

 

I cut him off again, “Tell Vincent to move the appointment up. I can get it to him now.”

 

Before Tino could say anything else, I hung up on him. I straightened the strap on my shoulder, the bag suddenly feeling like it weighed about a million pounds.

 

I started walking, walking without a backward glance at Julian’s body. I didn’t have time to think about what this was, what I’d done. I had a dog that I’d made a promise to.


	7. Chapter 7

 

**SEVEN**

I stared at the cracks on my ceiling with a deadness that should have terrified me. And even when my eyes started burning, I didn’t close them. Sleep was pointless, anyway. Whether or not I woke up it wouldn’t change what I am.

 

I felt blood trickle down the cuts I’d reopened on my knuckles trying to shove in my jammed apartment door, an irony that I’d laughed at as soon as I’d flung myself down on the couch I’d just been scrubbing a shit stain out of only hours ago. I didn’t know at what point I’d started getting a migraine, but the throbbing pulsed in my eye sockets, almost as if my own body was punishing me, telling me who I was over and over again: _murderer! Murderer! Murderer!_

 

The phone rang. I didn’t answer it. And it kept ringing, and ringing, until I heard my own voice played back, barely encouraging whoever was trying to get ahold of me to leave a message at the tone, and then—

 

“Jason?” Tim’s soft voice filled my living room. Yeah, I’d called him. I didn’t know why I did and it had been as soon as I’d gotten in the door and my hands had been shaking; but for some reason that had been the first thing on my mind, to call Tim, call Tim, _call Tim_ , and then I’d been calling him, half delirious, and saying things about tonight that I hadn’t been ready to tell anyone yet, “Jason, what did you do? Are you hurt? Jason, are you still there?” A pause, then: “I’m coming to get you.”  


At that, I laughed out loud. It was a dry, rasping sound, almost as if the action was foreign to my body, unwelcome. Coming to get me? Where would we go that could possibly fix all of this? The pounding in my head ratcheted higher as I imagined Grayson finding out about it: he would shake his head in that condescending way of his that he loved so much and say something about how he’d been right about me. Maybe even Bruce Wayne would stop trying to make me into his own personal form of community service.

 

It was easy now, even as I lay there on that couch numb to everything but the incessant faucet drip coming from the kitchen sink, and the pounding migraine in my head, and the blood that had no doubt dripped over my fingers and onto the floor (I vaguely thought about how I’d have to clean that up now, too—), to see myself. It sucked, you know, realizing you’d been lying to yourself for a very long time; realizing that the person you’d told yourself you would never be was actually who you’d been all along.

The knock on my door roused me from a fitful half-sleep, interrupting everything—the migraine, the faucet dripping, the blood that was now drying on my hands—I knew who it was, and when I didn’t answer, the door opened anyway. I hadn’t seen the point in locking it.

 

Tim Drake stood there in the dark entryway of my apartment, framed by the flickering, yellow light in the hallway. It didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust to the murkiness of my surroundings, and when I did, he came into view clearly. His black hair was soaked through despite him wearing a hood over his head, raindrops running rivulets over the leather covering his shoulders. Without the suit and the tie and the dress shoes and everything else that made him a Wayne, he looked like what he really was—a kid. The sudden nostalgia of it all burned my throat.

 

“You look like a wet dog.” Raspy, my voice was so raspy. It didn’t even sound like me.

 

Tim didn’t smile. He didn’t do anything, really, except stare at me from where he stood in the entryway. In fact, he stood there for so long that I was pretty sure all the rainwater on his clothing had dripped off him to form a small puddle beneath his feet. His shoulders were braced with caution, even as he continued to look at me like a problem that was incapable of being solved.

 

“You killed someone.”

 

I broke our stare, letting my head flop back on the couch. The movement jarred my head, the pounding flaring up again. _Murderer, murderer, murderer—_

 

“That’s all you got to say to me?”  


I heard the door close, and when I opened my eyes again, the room was pitch black. A moment later I saw Tim in the corner of my eye as he settled onto the corner of the armrest, his hands jammed into his pockets, head down. He looked defeated, like he’d lost something, and I felt like it was all my fault.

 

“What happened, Jason?” He asked, his voice cracked, and he sounded like he was about to cry, and if that happened, I was one hundred percent going to step into oncoming traffic.

 

“A lot of things.” I wondered if I looked about as raw as I felt.

 

“That doesn’t answer my question.”  


I looked at him squarely, and he looked at me. “I don’t think you want an answer.”

 

Tim blinked, his slanted eyes wide as if I’d told him to go fuck himself. Brow creasing, he stood up abruptly, jamming his hands deeper into his pockets, a habit he’d picked up as a kid, “Here’s the fucking thing, Jason. I do. I do want an answer.

 

“And I don’t know if you’ll ever get it, but I want an answer for every single question you’ve ever left me with. The questions I’ve had about you since I was a kid. You left, and you didn’t look back—you didn’t give a shit—but I did. _I always did._ Fuck, Jason. You spent your whole life making yourself into this irredeemable person but you didn’t stop to consider that maybe there was one person in your whole life who saw past that and didn’t care.”

 

I didn’t look at him; I forced myself to keep looking at the cracks on the ceiling, grinding my teeth so he wouldn’t know how much his words had affected me. Because he was right, but then he wasn’t; he didn’t know that after I’d left he had been the one person I’d stayed up worrying about, the one person that yes, I, Jason Todd, had been terrified about letting down my whole life and had been so afraid of admitting it.

 

“You’re exhausted, Jason,” Tim continued, his voice taking on another pitch, as if his fervency was sucking all the energy out of him, “give it up. I know you think taking Dad’s offer is a crutch, but have you ever considered that maybe it’s time to stop being afraid of having something better?”

 

I looked at him.

 

“Come home,” Tim said, pleading with me.

 

He was right.

 

I was exhausted.

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

EIGHT

Blue eyes stared back at me in the bathroom mirror, wide and unfeeling. It was my face, but then it wasn’t; I hated that no matter how early I went to sleep I was constantly tired. 

I supposed being Richard Grayson wasn’t too bad of a thing to come by: the orphaned boy, who was adopted by a billionaire mogul and was set to inherit an empire someday, but it was easy to idealize another person’s life when you only glimpsed it from a birds’ eye view. 

I sighed, dragging a towel over my face before picking my glasses off the marble countertop and sliding them up onto my face. My head was aching with caffeine withdrawal, and as I opened up the cabinet, a slip of paper fell out. 

I bent to pick it up, realizing as soon as my fingers touched it that it was a photo, not paper. I turned it over.

It was a picture of me. Or not me. The me from years ago, standing next to two younger boys, clearly Jason and Tim. It had been taken a year before Damian had been born, and my eyes traced the picture: me, the tallest, with my inky black hair that had been longer then, and my dark skin, and then Jason, shorter, and with a similar appearance. Tim stood between us, sporting a gap toothed smile, his eyes squeezed tightly shut against the glare of the sun. I hated how often my gaze flitted back to Jason, I hated the pang that tore through my chest every time it did. I hated the stupid fucking picture but mostly, I hated how much I’d changed since then.

No tears for the dead, I guess. On impulse, my hand formed into a fist, crushing the picture between my fingers.

-

I exited the bathroom, towel wrapped around my waist as I made my way towards the bedroom. Something moved in the corner of my eye, causing me to stop in my tracks.

“What the hell is this?”

“Nice to see you, too,” Jason Todd greeted me, from where he was slumped over the island countertop in my kitchen. He looked like shit, really, honest-to-god shit, hair slicked to his head because of the rain; his lip swollen with dried blood, and purple bruises that stretched from his left cheekbone all the way up to his eye. Something told me that even if he hadn’t looked like he’d just walked away from a cage match, it wouldn’t have helped his appearance very much. I hated that no matter how much I tried to shove the feeling down, even after an entire year of trying to ignore the fact that he existed, of trying to disown him the way he’d disowned us, the sight of Jason like this terrified me.

“Dick,” the sound of my nickname pulled my attention away from Jason, and it was then that I noticed Tim had been standing there, too. It was something I’d resented when we were younger, the way he could sneak up on me or just be standing in a room without me knowing he’d been there at all. Tim Drake had always had a way about him that embodied quietness.

“How the hell did you get in here?” I snapped, looking at Jason again, my eyebrows furrowing. Even though he’d clearly had the shit beaten out of him, he still had that stupid half smirk on his face, for reasons that were beyond me. I’d spent nearly my whole life with him, we were—had been—brothers, and I was still terrible at reading him. A part of me knew that he knew that, and I think it gave him a sick sense of satisfaction.

“I had a key made, remember?” Tim sounded agitated, an emotion he rarely displayed. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and curling at the ends. “Jason needs your help.”

My pulse started thumping, and I felt my lip curl into a sneer as I looked back at him, “What could I possibly have to offer him?”

“Ri—”

“Trust me, if it’s anyone’s help I don’t need, it’s definitely yours,” Jason replied, his voice hot with contempt as he stole a resentful look at Tim. 

“Yet you’re here, aren’t you?” Tim snapped. Jason closed his mouth, looking at the floor in a gesture that surprised me. In all his twenty years, I don’t think anyone had ever been able to shut him up, not even me. 

“Will someone actually explain to me what’s going on?”

Jason cleared his throat, looking up at me. We stared at each other for what seemed like a century, until he finally looked away, as if he were trying to piece together the right words to say. Everything about him, his stance, the relaxed way he stood, the set of his shoulders—it was all cocky, all posturing, all him, and yet, I had the distinct feeling that what he was about to say wouldn’t be.

“I fucked up.”

Something inside me irked. “Well if that’s not the understatement of the y—”

“Can you fuck off? I’m being honest with you,” Jason looked up at me, and I knew something was off. Terribly. “It’s bad.”

“How bad?”

“He shot someone—” Tim began, at the same time as Jason’s, “I killed someone”, and I barely had time to react before Jason shot Tim another venomous look, one that clearly said, shut the fuck up.

My blood spiked, “You what?” My mind kicked into race mode, piecing together everything: the way he was acting, the way both of them had come here. And now, now because I knew why they had come here. I hated that I was feeling a million things at once, but I forced myself to focus on the one thing: anger. “Jason—”

“Don’t act so fucking surprised, brother,” Jason spat, kicking up out of his leaning position on the table. He took a step closer to me, and when I glanced down, I could see the knuckles on both his fists were a swollen purple. He killed someone—“you predicted it, didn’t you? Well congratulations, I’m a criminal.”

My hands balled into fists instinctively, and Jason noticed. Tim did; too, from the way he took a step closer towards us from out of the corner of my eye. My jaw ticked. “You don’t get to come here, act the way you want, and then expect me to fix it for you. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t beg to come here,” Jason said, coming closer until his finger was pointed in my chest. Everything right now was surreal, so insanely surreal I could have blacked out. From this close I could see the scratches smattering the skin on his face; everything about him familiar in a way that hurt me physically, to the point where all I wanted to do was drop the façade and ask what had ever gone wrong. 

But you can’t, because some people were just stitched together more roughly than others. 

I realized my eyes were burning. Whether it was tears, I couldn’t tell, but when Jason looked at me, his expression changed, and he took a step back. 

“Can we all act our age?” Tim said, and we both looked at him. He looked displaced, the expression on his features pleading, “I’m tired of this.”

Jason glanced at me again, then opened his mouth, his voice quieter than I expected, “A job for my old boss didn’t go the way I planned,” his voice cracked as he looked away, “He was going to do it, yeah? He was gonna kill me.”

The hardened part of me; the part of me that was dead to all of this wanted to react. I looked at him, and despite everything, my irritation flared, “How can you come to me like this, Jason? You fucked off for over a year, I didn’t hear shit from y—”

“Christ, Grayson, what the fuck do you want from me?” Jason snapped, his voice deep. He flexed his fingers, as if he were fighting some second nature instinct to clock me across the face, “I didn’t want to fucking do it, okay? I didn’t want to fucking kill anyone. God, don’t you know that if there were even the slimmest chance of it being possible, I would rewind the last twenty-four hours and do it over again? This whole thing’s a fucking shit show, but it’s my life. And I’m going to have to fucking deal with it. So if you’re so ashamed of me, tell me now, so we can get this over with.”

“Jason—” Tim’s voice was cracking, almost as if Jason had hit him in the stomach physically, and it made me feel cracked open.

“You don’t get to act like that, okay?” I sounded hoarse; almost as if another person were speaking, “you don’t get to make the decisions for how we feel and how we act. You spent most of your teenaged life doing this, Jason, and frankly, I’m fucking over it. Do you even understand the consequences of what you’ve done? You m—”

“Say it, Grayson, fucking say it. I murdered someone,” everything about Jason was coiled; from the way his shoulders were hiked to the way he set his jaw. He pressed his eyes into the palms of his hands, the gesture of someone who was completely spent and didn’t have any other options. I watched him as he winced after coming into contact with the bruises spread all over his skin, “You don’t get to talk consequences to me. I know what I’ve done, and I have to fucking live with it. You think I’m here so you and Dad’s money can put a band-aid on it?”

The room fell silent, and I looked at Tim. If this had been a year ago, I would have had all the answers—I had been good at fixing things, fixing the stupid fights that my younger brothers had gotten into, over shit that seemed trivial as fuck in comparison to what we were dealing with now. I’d always known Jason had been cut harder than the rest of us—none of us had come from good family backgrounds, before Bruce had found us, anyway—but he had been different. I had never considered the possibility of it leading to this, and it stirred something in me, the old me, the old me that took it upon himself to hold his family together. 

“This old boss of yours,” I began, almost in disbelief at the next words that were about to come out of my mouth, “does he know that he’s your old boss?”

Jason glared at me, “Don’t you get it? It’s not that fucking easy. I can’t just leave.” His voice was shot through, ragged, almost as ragged as he looked, “There’s always strings attached.”

“What does that mean?” Tim asked, but I knew he knew the answer, and so did I.

Jason laughed, finding some sick sort of humor in it. Our eyes met. 

“After what I did? I’m a loose end now; don’t you see? Someone’s gonna make sure it gets tied.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked in the comments of the last chapter (I think!) if I made Dick Romani in this story like he is in the comics, and I'd like to let you know that yes, I consider him to be Romani as well.

**Author's Note:**

> If you read and enjoy, then thank you!
> 
> *Edit
> 
> I just saw someone comment (I appreciate the feedback!) but I did want to clear something up here. The story is set in New York, not Gotham. In this AU its completely real world, so Gotham doesn't exist.


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